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Has Open Source Lost Its Halo?
PetManimal writes "Open-source software development once had a reputation as a grassroots movement, but it is increasingly a mainstream IT profit center, and according to Computerworld, some in the industry are asking whether 'open source' has become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior. Citing an online opinion piece by Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., the article notes that HP and IBM have not only profited from open-source at the expense of competitors, but have also boosted their images in the open-source community. The Computerworld article also mentions the efforts by the Microsoft/Windows camp to promote open-source credentials: '[InfoWorld columnist Dave] Rosenberg is more disturbed by the bandwagon jumpers: the companies, mostly startups, belatedly going open-source in order to ride a trend, while paying only lip service to the community and its values. Take Aras Corp., a provider of Windows-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software that in January decided to go open-source. Rosenberg depicted the firm in his blog as an opportunistic Johnny-Come-Lately. "I'm not impressed when a company whose software is totally built on Microsoft technologies goes open-source," said Rosenberg, who even suspects that the company is being promoted by Microsoft as a shill to burnish Redmond's image in open-source circles."'"
I wish I had know about that.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The first thing that crossed my mind upon reading the headline was that some previosly open-source game to rival Halo had gone closed source or the development team walked away..
Silly context, always breaking things.
Can and Will an article that started off with chewing out Open Source vendors who ignore its values and end up bashing Microsoft.
Didnt mean it as a flame..it was just funny reading it.
Rapid Nirvana
I know Tivo pisses some people off, while at the same time they are sort of a poster child for "what linux can do".
I mean, they follow the letter of the GPL - I can get the source - but since the kernel must be cryptographically signed to execute on the device, this source is useless.
But the GPL never said anything about me being able to hack my device. Tivo is just like any other corporation in that respect, they don't want me adding functionality, they want me to pay for it.
They've taken from the community, made a good deal of money, and really have given nothing back, and really don't have to.
The GPL, and OSS in general, really isn't about giving back. It's about taking advantage of the altruism of others. I don't mean that in a negative way either. When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself. Tivo, and for that matter, IBM, HP or Novell all have the same rights that I do.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
are forced to reinvent it. The corollary to this is that those who do not understand economics, are eventually forced to "reinvent" it.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Everybody has been in such a rush to get OSS adopted by the world at large that we're losing sight of what made it so great to begin with... A community effort, for fun, to hack, to be free. Not so we could be taken advantage of. This is what I have feared for years and it looks like the "movement" is getting hijacked.
OK, help me out here. A few years ago weren't the open source folks crying that no one was taking their clearly-superior products seriously? Now a few large companies are utilizing it and promoting it and taking it seriously, and we're still crying? Hmmmmmm.
It's not that it's lost its halo, it's just that it has realized its usefulness. The fact that companies make money off open-source technologies doesn't mean that open-source is bad. Anyone who thinks that is doing the entire open-source community a great disservice.
We don't live in a utopian communist state. Progress is driven by self-interest, and I am happy that companies make money using open-source technologies, because it not only affirms the essential role of OSS in the marketplace, but also provides incentive for support and adoption of OSS by those who were previously skeptical.
Recent developments with Novell aside, if software companies open their software (under a real Free license), their reasons for doing so and their relations with the community aren't really that important. That's the whole reason we have Free Software licenses -- so that users and independent developers don't have to worry about the behavior of the companies that put out the software. You can trust the GPL, even if you don't trust SoftwareVendorReleasingGPL'dSoftware.
I think its a case of "bad apples" spoiling the good ones.
Whether fair or not, a lot of open source projects come across as being incomplete, UI nightmares, geek-tool-only, and large organization unfriendly because of support issues.
Not every open-source project is that way, but when I worked at HP that was the case. You mentioned open-source and managers would run to update your file as a trouble maker. When you got a manager to approve a demo, you'd have to work twice as hard to explain why this was a good alternative, why the weird UI wasn't an issue, and how the tool was self supporting or support could be done easily "in house". However, if you hadn't told the manager that it was "open source" and that it was "off the shelf", you could get by without the massive sales job.
Why?
Because too many open source projects are:
It's a perception problem. No matter the platform, OSS has an image problem that may be rightly deserved.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
...I could care less if the company cares about the community or its values, and that's the point.
The only good argument from a business perspective for open source is that if you use open source software you are not going to be held hostage by a licensor that alters the deal when your business is wedded to the IT infrastructure they provide. As long as the open source license these "bad" open source companies release it under is really an open license that allows you to modify and redistribute the code, that's all that matters. I don't have to care why the released the source. It just doesn't matter.
Half of his arguments are BS.
For example, Eclipse had killed JBuilder and Symantec Cafe (?) not because it was free but because it was so much better. GOOD commercial Java IDEs are still alive and kicking - see IDEA (http://www.jetbrains.com/) for example.
Apache Derby is hardly ever used outside of small embedded databases. Everyone uses Oracle/Postgres/MySQL/...
A lot of GOOD commercial products exists and successfully compete with their OpenSource counterparts. For example, Tangasol Coherence (http://www.tangosol.com/) beats JGroups and JBoss Cache.
Heaven forbid people make money on building products around a free piece of software while working within the guidelines of use and distribution of that software.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Well, tomorrow if IBM decides to change the fee structure and demand an arm and a leg or it thinks it should change the file formats to keep the competition out or decide to drop support for some API to maintain an advantage... Guess what? There is nothing to stop the customers/competitors to take the ball run circles around IBM. That is why Open source is not all that predatory.
Sometimes some people get a profound insight and that produces a view point that is strikingly different from the crowd. This article mimics the symptom, "being radically different from the rest" but without a cogent underlying argument that is the hallmark of a "profound insight".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Who cares why they open their source? As long as they release the source code, without restrictions that prevent the public from changing, revising, executing and redistributing it, people in the public can do whatever we want with it.
If selfserving companies (what other kind is there?) find it in their interest to open their source, then I welcome them joining the open source "movement". More source needs to be opened in the selfinterest of its originators. And more selfserving companies opening source will help convince others how its in their interest, too. Which will release more source.
What needs to die is the idea that open source is some kind of ideal. It's an engineering collaboration technique. It's like object oriented design. There are OOD ideologues, but they're harmless and lost in the roar of people using OOD to solve real problems. Some people are still arguing about the ideology of file vs project variable scoping. But practically no one lets that get in the way of writing code with well-defined interfaces for other code. Let's see open source outgrow the ideology, and just remain a stable way to produce and use software.
--
make install -not war
Exactly what part of "competitive marketplace" does the author not understand?
Ruthless and self-serving behavior is how businesses compete. No one is in business to help their competitors. No one who has to deal with the realities of the business world gives a rat's ass about the ideologies behind Free/open source software. The only thing anyone cares about is whether open source provides a better solution than the alternatives, or provides a similar solution at a lower price. IBM helps and promotes open source projects because these projects help IBM. This isn't altruism, but quid pro quo.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
the knowledge and wisdom that being self-serving can help the community but the main motivation is that you are helping yourself. (Not that this works 100% of the time, hence laws®ulation.)
But isn't this same philosophy driving Open Source essentially? People give to the whole because they know it is cheaper to maintain and they get more (features, reliability, freedom, what have you) out of it than going closed source?
I am not so much bothered by big companies jumping in for their own benefit than a company like SCO and Microsoft behind it, who aren't satisfied with a piece of the pie, but want the whole pie, even if it means destroying the existing community - and those are the players that really aren't involved in the first place.
IBM has a right to try to make money and if there business is good enough that they entice people to spend that cash, they deserve it. Otherwise, it makes no sense for IBM to be in Opensource in the first place. And they have contributed enough to be seen and acknowledged as a general benefactor.
Not to sound like Stallman here, but there have always been two camps - those who think software should be Free as in "we should be able to do what we want with the code for moral/ethical reasons" and those who see practical benefits as in "when people can do what they want with the code everyone benefits."
I would expect most businesses are part of the open source camp, not the free software camp, and open source was always pragmatic. That's WHY it appeals to people where Free doesn't - because there's a definite concrete benefit.
Businesses as they exist in the US are by and large about making money, not upholding principles. Some businesses do both, but look at Google ("do no evil") and how they delt with China. Capitalism has its limits, and one of them is being socially aware - awareness of community responsibility and discharging that responsibility is always a short term loss for a long term gain (i.e. pay more to properly dispose of waste, lose the profit you could have gotten by keeping the $$ and dumping it in the river, but long term preserve the environment and the health of the people around you, avoid litigation and community ill will). Capitalism sucks at long term anything, which is why government needs to be different from and independent of corporations. That's why framing the free/open proposal as "you get a benefit/save $$ from doing this" rather than "you're morally obligated to do this - it's the ethical thing" is effective. It just so happens that releasing free software has immediate benefits AND benefits society, so PR can say the company is doing both. Sure, the ACTUAL reasons they did it might not deserve a halo, but getting outraged over them not being "genuinely committed to the ideals of Free Software" is as pointless as it is futile, in the business world as it exists today.
If people do the right thing, it's not very helpful to wonder if they did it for the wrong reasons. How can we know for sure, and what could we do about it even if we did know for sure and don't like their reasons? Insist they do the wrong thing?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
You know how people usually think when they see a company is "non-profit" that instantly makes them somehow better?
The same thing holds true for open source.
Note that I fully support open source (and would contribute if I could program anything more complicated than "hello world") and encourage others to use it...regardless, that still does not mean that open source is all green pastures and trippy skies.
The motivation to do something merely for the sake of doing it is fantastic...on the other hand, the potential of making millions and millions of dollars (or losing it, for that matter) is one hell of a motivater too. Granted, certain software companies are motivated in better ways than others, but there is something people often forget:
Just because a programmer works for a major software company does not mean they don't take pride in their work the same way an open source programmer does.
A corporate programmer is a whore. An open source programmer is a slut.
One does it for money, one does it for pleasure. The one doing it for money gets pleasure out of it, just in a different way than the one that is not motivated by money.
(To quote the great George Carlin on the subject of prostitution: "Selling is legal...fucking is legal...why isn't selling fucking legal?"...gotta love those multiple-meaning jokes:-))
Living With a Nerd
It's great when Linus Torvalds releases Linux as open-source, even though it's systematically destroying the competitive market for mid-level Unix OS's, because he's a nice, altruistic guy.
It's not as good when Sun and IBM open-source their Java IDE's, because it destroys the market for Java IDE's, because they're laaaarge corporations, and are only doing this to weed out smaller competitors.
And it's eeevil when someone open-sources something on a Windows platform, because they obviously are only doing it for the publicity, regardless of whether they have competitors or not.
But then again, Sun and IBM are directly competing with Microsoft, the most evil of all. And open-sourcing on Windows might mean more software gets ported to Linux.
But wait, we should ignore this benefit, because, again, these are laaaarge corporations and aren't part of the community. Nor are they completely altruistic, because they make money.
But I really do like Eclipse and Java.
(Damn it, I'm confused! Who am I supposed to hate here?)
Oh yeah, Microsoft SUCKS!
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I think people who are bashing the article because "hey, they're obeying GPL, what's the problem, companies are ruthless profit-making machines" are right in one sense, but I think are missing the point. The point is that GPL was originally intended to be a rather utopian project. Richard Stallman had ideological and moral goals in creating the GPL, and I think that people are correct in saying that the ruthlessness of the market has figured out ways to subvert that (see, e.g., the TiVo issue discussed above.)
I think it's an important lesson for programmers and activists in the years to come. Look, the basic point of GPL was a rather radical one: the intellectuals and programmers who held the skills necessary to build the software wanted to wrest some sort of control over their work from the bosses and use it to promote rather radical anti-capitalist ideas such as freedom-to-hack, etc. etc.. I think in many ways that goal has not been realized, and I think people who try such things in the future have to realize that you can't achieve such goals by clever licensing alone. The market will find a way.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
One of the big benefits of the GPL is that it helps businesses to protect themselves from bad vendor behavior.
No, it is not a panacea. Anyone who thinks so will get what they probably deserve. However, it is certainly an improvement over what vendors of, say, closed-source accounting and CRM packages are able to do to their customers.
Of course, there will still be slimy business behavior - that is what capitalism is all about.
Hold on now. You're telling me that, all this time, HP and IBM participate in open source game for their own financial gain ? How can this be?
Is open-source software being used by vendors to gain advantages? I assume that's what was meant by "ruthless and self-serving behavior." Although I don't agree that gaining an advantage by releasing code to the world under the GPL can realistically be classified as "ruthless" it is self-serving. There is not much that a large corporation does that isn't. They exist, after all, to make a profit for their stockholders.
But let's look at what may be driving big corporations to embrace open-source: Microsoft.
Really, what choice do they realistically have? Microsoft uses dirty and illegal tactics. They leverage their monopoly products to such a degree that even large corporations know that they can't compete. Microsoft doesn't realize it but they are their own worst enemy. They are like the unsuccessful parasite that kills its host and therefore dies also.
The only choice the IT industry outside of Microsoft has is to ban together in a common strategy to slay Goliath.
Given Microsoft's continued anti-competitive tactics I agree. We should all work together to make Microsoft irrelevant. Don't support them in anything that they do. Don't use technologies that they develop. Let the Mono project die. Don't support it, don't use it. Use free (as in speech) technologies to generate active web pages. Never use ASP.net.
The first link was Slash dotted but I have a few comments about the second. It states:
"Imagine, if you will, that it's the late Nineties. A certain software company based in Redmond, Washington has recently released Visual Studio 97--thereby bundling together many of its development tools for the first time. Now imagine that the company decided to release those tools for free."
Microsoft has released some tools for free (as in beer) and have even allowed companies to view their source code with strict "no compile, "no altering", non-disclosure restrictions but this is not the definition of open source.
Free software as defined by the Open Source community is not about money. How long will it take for people to "get it?" Free software is "free as in speech." Is that so hard to grasp? It is free of restrictions of any kind except that the user may not apply new restrictions upon it. At least that was the intent. Microsoft and Novell may have found a patent loophole in the GPL v2 license. (The slime balls) But this loophole will be closed in GPL v3.
Asking the question : What would the reaction be the author states:
"I think we all know the answer to that one. As James Robertson over at Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants notes: "...had Microsoft released Visual Studio as free software 10 years ago, that almost certainly would have been seen as predatory behavior."
Not if they had released the source code under the GPL. Again, keeping the source code proprietary and releasing only a free (as in beer) executable is a very different thing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If Free and Open Source Software is getting so trendy that evil corporations are actually releasing code under bona fide licenses that grant broad user and developer freedoms, I'd tend to say that the opposite: open ideals are forcing corporate greed to lose some of its horns.
Microsoft Shared Source? No. Mysql? Sure. Tivo? Partially (it's essentially a GPL kernel and FOSS OS on top of a proprietary BIOS and hardware design).
Don't compromise the licenses, and don't let anyone get away with branding themselves "open" short of the licenses, and we will continue to see sociopathic business interests kept to a modicum of user accountability.
You have demonstrated at least a passing familiarity with the slashdot ethos. That's why it's so surprising that you don't recognize the simple truth. Individuals who use open source but do nothing to contribute except yelling loudly and incoherently about it's benefits are supporting open source. Because, you know, they're, uh, rebellious non-conformists sticking it to the man. Companies who invest time and money into open source projects are still evil because, um, they're doing it for mercenary reasons. And mercenaries kill people. Which is evil. QED.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I've never used DotNetNuke, which is basically a Microsoft friendly rip off of PHP-Nuke, but the mere fact that it exists and that "Microsofties" are using that as free software to make their lives better just pisses me off.
And all of the "improvements" that Sun has made to OpenOffice.org? C'mon, we all know that it started as Star Office, and even though it's free and it does a great job, I just hate telling everyone about how it allows them to do everything that they need without buying Microsoft office. The stench of corporate influence makes me gag as I make great reports with awesome graphics. I wish that they'd just stop developing it.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
No one ever said you had to switch to GPLv3. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you aren't distributing GPLv3 software, it won't even effect you.
A voluntary agreement can not in any conceivable way restrict freedom. It's voluntary, you are free to not enter the agreement. Funny how many people's definition of "freedom" really means freedom for them, not freedom for the other guy. Your position seems to advocate a kind of software socialism for corporations, where programmers are forced to cede control of their own creations in order to benefit another's bottom line.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Gratis Open-source Killer-app Destroys Demand for Expensive Inferior Products
So according to the articles:
some companies are embracing open source and are profiting from it -> that's evil
open source is gaining mainstream acceptance -> that's evil (linux is still cool, right?)
microsoft shop decides to go open source -> that's even more evil than just being a MS shop
The Open Source Movement becomes less revolutionary and exclusive as its success increases. Reducing the rebellion factor perhaps? some people simply like having the source because of utilitarian concerns, rather than because it has been an anti-establishment movement. Stallman was a crusader because he had to be, he was a pioneer.
But hating big business because it profits from open source makes you a communist, not simply a believer in open source.
I'm actually the other way around for most software:
I want:
1) To conform to open standards
2) To have the source code to the application
If it interoperates, that is best, If I can tweak it, that's something I can do if I get really bored.
You'd think that the availability of Eclipse and Netbeans would drive non-free Java IDEs out of the market. However at my company IntelliJ IDEA is the most popular IDE despite its non-zero cost. After using both I would be satisfied with Eclipse, but I'm glad my company got me a copy of IDEA. Apparently companies are willing to shell out cash for software that is only incrementally more useful than free alternatives. See Windows vs. Linux, MS Office vs. OpenOffice, etc.
For me, the fact that OSS is no longer considered a grassroots movement is a good thing. Now we can actually make the distinction between OSS and FOSS. OSS is an important concept, and it's been around since the beginning of Unix. OSS simply means that source code is included with the license. If you want to show integrity, OSS is the way to go. It allows your client to independently verify your work. Given the amount of spyware and rootkit stories we hear, you'd be silly to trust any ISV who *didn't* provide source code with their product. But you can still have your client sign an NDA, use a license that prevents redistribution, etc. OSS was and still is a workable business model.
FOSS is still a grassroots movement, and will continue to be. The reason is simple; FOSS builds on concepts of OSS to perform a public service. FOSS is about freedom, which requires integrity in addition to a whole bunch of other grassroots goodness.
So no, OSS hasn't lost it's halo (assuming it ever had one) because it's always been about openness and integrity. If it weren't, it wouldn't be OSS.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Even in my current job, working as consultant/engineer for a business telecoms company who has already migrated their core telephony platforms onto Linux and is phasing out commercial UNIXes for Linux on our telecoms-related application servers, I get the freedoms to experiment with Linux on our platforms at a level that would be impossible on Windows.
Away from work, I can use Linux to build low cost solutions for friends, family members and "friends of friends" with small businesses. I've built them web servers, file servers, firewalls and multimedia centres, secure in the knowledge that I am doing so entirely legally without owing any corporation one penny for a software license.
Even more, I can trundle along to any one of a number of evening Linux computer clubs within driving distance of my house. As someone who "grew his computer teeth" on the Amiga and the BBS scene of the late 80s/early 90s, I've definitely got a feeling of the hobbyist, grass roots movement that just wasn't there in the early days of Windows. And I know of absolutely no Windows computer clubs anywhere, let alone in my area.
And finally, Linux and Open Source has made my computing time fun again. I'm not in a position where I'm "forced" to use a piece of overpriced commercial software that doesn't do half of what it should do. I use MS Office for what I need it to do - hell, I even quite like XP now I've stripped it back to the classic Windows desktop view and stripped out all the stuff I don't need it to run. I can play all my favourite games on it, write a few documents I need to and then switch over to one of my Linux boxes when I've had enough of it.
So David Rosenberg perhaps need to remove those spectacles that only let him see the corporate view of the world and look a bit closer to home because the grass roots movement is still very much there.
And many thanks to Linus - he was right, I am "having fun"...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
OSS losing its Halo? Couldn't care less. Bunjie keeps coming up with new Halos. IRRC Halo 3 is allready in the works. ...
Puns aside. WTF is this about? If IBM and Co. are making huge amounts of cash on OSS I'd say good for them and all of us. If I get Sun and IBM sending Netbeans and Eclipse into battle over who can build the best all-free IDE and they're making money on it I'd say we have a win-win-win situation here. And if it's just that opinion leaders such as OSS geeks tell their bosses to buy stuff from Sun and IBM because they rock - all the better.
Shrinkwrap software only business is over. People yearn for paradise which is a standardized operating system free and flexible enough to deal with any useage scenario. Currently it looks as if this is going to be some unix variant. The situation described in TFA emphasises exactly that: OSS will take over. Get with the programm.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
People are free to tell you whatever they want to. You are free to listen or not. Speech is not capable of "pounding you into the ground." As far as I can tell, there is still much debate over GPLv3 and the "RMS-is-GOD-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd" are a very small minority of open source supporters. In any case, you can always use the GPLv2 version and update it yourself under v2. Just because someone happens to think RMS is god is no reason for you to steal their work. And if there is one thing I know about the RMSIGACDNW crowd, it is that they don't give a rat's ass if you use their software or not.
What "business" are you giving that crowd, anyway? How much are you paying them? Nothing? You mean you're just a whining leach who doesn't want to contribute but wants to dictate how others contribute? Gotcha.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I work in a fairly large IT shop in an industrial company. Today was our annual "IT Town Hall". During the question and answer portion of the proceedings, the question came up:
"Have we thought about what our policy is regarding Open Source software?"
The answer was short and simple. "Our policy is to use the software that works. If we have an area that you believe can benefit from Open Source, make a case for it."
Simple enough. The truth is that we licence software from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, and many other companies, and nearly all of it is closed source. We have some OS stuff around, but we don't pick software because it's free. Our direction must always be to solve business problems. And if the closed source product is better at that task, we're fine with paying for it.
The quasi-religious attitude towards open source that you find in many places isn't present here. If it works, we use it.
We don't see a halo. Just tools that we might or might not be able to use.
I don't believe that the negative attitudes that I've seen as being so prevalent within the "Linux community," affect Open Source as a whole. Some of us think that the attitude among the BSD developers of refusing to try and dictate downstream use is a much more enlightened way of thinking...and in my own mind, the only real reason why anyone associated with Linux thinks that dictating downstream use is a good thing is because Stallman thought it first, and they've swallowed his ideas whole...not because they've actually bothered to think about the consequences of it.
I've said before that with most of the little people associated with Linux, there isn't a problem...they're just doing their thing each day, maybe contributing patches to a few different projects here and there, and generally living quietly and agreeably. The "leaders" of the "community" on the other hand, are people who I really wish would crawl into a hole in the ground somewhere and die, to be honest. (Bruce Perens, I'm talking to you, among others) That also includes a number of ACs I've had replying to me on here recently who don't even have the basic courage to put their name to what they write, and then expect others to care about their opinions.
I've realised that one of the main differences between Linux people and the BSD developers is actually posessiveness. The gift culture that ESR wrote about doesn't actually exist with Linux. The BSD people *do* give away their work, genuinely and completely, with no strings attached. The GPL on the other hand encourages an attitude which basically says, "We wrote this, but we'll let you use it...but on the other hand, we don't ever want you to forget that we wrote it, and we also want you to know that we feel that because we wrote it and you are using it, you are forever beholden to us, and we have the right to dominate you in more or less any manner we see fit."
I want to suggest to Jeremy Ellison and a few of the Debian people in particular that maybe you're nowhere near as high minded as you think, but that in fact, you're actually a group of extremely selfish, controlling, mean-spirited human beings who get off on the fact that writing FOSS under the GPL allows you to superficially appear to be altruistic when in fact you're the complete opposite.
BSD developers use the BSD license to completely give away software without stipulation in order to benefit other human beings. *Some* GPL developers at least use the GPL to write software which they can then try and use to *control* other human beings...because they have the attitude that if people who use said software start doing things they don't like, the access to the software for said users will be removed.
You can try and justify this as much as you want, (and doubtless you will) but I think it sucks, that you're completely rotten human beings, and that you're made all the more rotten by the fact that you try and make out that morality is something that you actually are concerned about. You're confusing your own morality with a desire to control what it is that *other* people do. Although again, that's merely an idea that you picked up from the usual source...the root of most of Linux's fundamental problems: Richard Stallman.